by Roxane Dhand
‘Don’t bother yourself trying to shout tonight. There’s going to be lashings of time to get to know her. Perhaps best though if you talk to someone else just for now, don’t you think?’
The waiter cleared away her half-eaten bowl of consommé.
She was not in the mood for another culinary scolding. She glanced at Mrs Wallace who, happily, was chatting enthusiastically to the second officer and glowing like a lantern.
Maisie turned back to the seedy gentleman. He was stabbing at peas with the tines of his fork, stacking them up like beads on an abacus.
‘Could I pass you anything, Mr Smalley? Salt or pepper perhaps?’ A shovel?
‘Wine bottle first,’ he said, his mouth full. ‘Then the bread basket.’
She resisted the temptation to pass comment, and lifted the decanter. ‘Is your wife not with you on this trip?’
Mrs Wallace, who apparently had the hearing of a bat, leaned in close as though about to tell her a secret. ‘Don’t ask personal questions, Maisie dear. It’s vulgar.’
Mr Smalley filled his glass and swirled it round, inspecting the amber liquid in the candlelight. He took a large gulp and chewed it a few times, as if consulting the wine for an answer, then began cramming wodges of butter into a roll. ‘Never married,’ he said, a spray of spittle flying from his mouth. ‘But that’s not to say I’m not open to offers.’
Course after course as the meal ground on, Smalley became more tiresome. By his sprouting eyebrows and the silver hair that hung in tufts round his ears, Maisie judged him to be in his sixties, give or take. That they were at least forty years apart in age seemed almost to encourage him. When desserts were laid before them in twinkling glass bowls, he was already too close, his liver-spotted hand inching purposefully towards hers across the tablecloth, trapping her palm between the cream and custard. Plump, deliberate fingers crept a little closer with the cheese and crackers, and when coffee was poured, his knee was banging against hers with the determination of a rutting ram.
‘Let me tell you how I come to be on board, Miss Porter.’ He took a handful of petits fours from an oval china plate. ‘I’m taking the British Empire to the wilderness to enforce law and order in one of the gold-rush towns. I am to be Ballarat’s new resident magistrate. What do you say to that, eh?’ He stuffed a petit four into his mouth and started to chew. ‘And you, Miss Porter? What takes you to Australia?’
Mrs Wallace straightened her spectacles across the bridge of her nose. ‘Maisie is going to Australia to be married.’
‘Oh!’ Mr Smalley perked up. ‘Going fishing?’
Maisie shrank from his remark and Mrs Wallace dived in. ‘No, not fishing, Mr Smalley.’ She waggled an admonishing finger. ‘She is not fishing at all. She has landed herself a splendid prize. She is engaged to be married.’
Maisie felt a little queasy at the mention of the wedding, but hoped Mrs Wallace’s forthrightness would bring Mr Smalley to heel.
He was not to be put off. He tipped some wine into a glass and pushed it towards her. ‘Could I tempt you to a glass of wine, Miss Porter? To celebrate your good fortune?’ He dropped his hand below the tablecloth and squeezed her knee, kneading her flesh with his hot fingers.
Unable to move without causing a scene, she felt his hand scrabble up her thigh like an agile weasel. She batted it away, shifting sideways in her seat to increase the distance between them. If he does that one more time, I’ll stab his hand with my fork, she promised herself.
‘No, you could not, Mr Smalley.’ Mrs Wallace pushed the glass back across the tablecloth. ‘But you may pour one for me.’
The steamer chugged slowly towards its destination. The warm air became hot and started to make clear the impracticality of Maisie’s clothes. Away from all that was familiar, she felt herself changing in small rebellious ways. For the first time in her life, she was answerable only to herself. Although, of course, there was still Mrs Wallace to negotiate.
Her first defiant gesture happened quite unexpectedly one morning. In the cabin, the two women dressed and undressed mostly behind the bunk curtains. Mrs Wallace had laid claim to the lower berth and for Maisie, the novelty of negotiating the tiny wooden ladder several times a day soon lost its appeal. Lying or sitting on her bed, trying to lace herself into her corset with its steel boning in the gathering heat near the roof, proved too much of a trial. Even without the restrictive garment, she was as thin as paper, and it fitted snugly over her chemise and squeezed her hips and breasts into a shapeless column.
What must it feel like, she wondered as she plucked at the laces behind her back, to belong to a native tribe who wear nothing at all? So, in the privacy of the small, curtained space, she left the corset off and smuggled it down into her cabin trunk while Mrs Wallace was still asleep.
If Mrs Wallace noticed she had removed it, she didn’t remark on it – indeed, she was constantly distracted from her caretaking duties by Mr Smalley. She seemed very struck with him, but he had taken to staring at Maisie with looks of overpowering interest. She would almost have preferred the groping.
Towards ten o’clock one evening, when they had been at sea for several weeks, the ship was nearing the Cape of Good Hope and Maisie was melting in her clothes, Mr Smalley badgered his female companions to make up a four for a rubber of bridge.
Beads of sweat trickled down her worsted-clad spine, her feet protested in pools of deliquescent silk stocking, and the blood pounded hot in her cheeks. She folded her napkin carefully on her plate. ‘Would you mind very much if I give it a miss, Mrs Wallace? I don’t understand bridge at all well and am so hot in these suffocating clothes, I would prefer to take a turn on deck, to try to cool down a little before bed.’
‘You must not do that alone, Maisie. People will think you are fast. You must remember your position, as an engaged woman.’ She accented the word, giving Mr Smalley a sharp look. ‘I will forgo my game of bridge and accompany you, to safeguard your reputation. Western Australia has a very small English community and there will be gossip if you gad about by yourself. We must get you out of the habit quick smart.’
Maisie looked down at her hands. ‘No,’ she said quietly to no-one in particular but primarily to herself. She had put a smile on her face all evening until her muscles ached from the effort and she felt ill-disposed towards the loathsome Mr Smalley and his proposed game of cards.
Mrs Wallace blinked several times, very fast. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I may be engaged to be married but I am not about to enter a religious order and take my vows. I am quite able to take a walk by myself.’
‘Don’t be cheeky, dear. Have you no sense of propriety?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’ Out loud.
Mrs Wallace gave her a nod. ‘Good. Now come along. I thought you wanted a stroll.’
The divide between decks was no more than a couple of wooden gates, but everyone was aware of their function: to keep the three classes separate and in their proper places.
That evening, Mrs Wallace had liquid courage pumping in her veins. ‘What would you say, Maisie, if we were to take a turn through third class?’ Her speech was a little slurred.
Have we swapped roles and I have now become the responsible adult in charge of what is right and wrong? She put a hand on Mrs Wallace’s arm. ‘I’m not sure that we are supposed to. Trespassing between the decks is not permitted. The captain was very clear on that point. Do you not remember that he said so, at dinner on the first night?’
‘Of course I do, but he didn’t mean people like us, Maisie. These third-class folk know their place – they have had centuries of observance to remind them. The comment was made for them.’
‘They weren’t at our dinner, Mrs Wallace.’
‘Don’t split hairs, dear.’ Mrs Wallace clicked open the gate that accessed the lower deck and clattered down a flight of narrow wooden stairs, with Maisie a reluctant accomplice.
The night was overcast, but every
now and then the clouds parted and moonlight filtered palely across the deck. Maisie saw they weren’t the only trespassers from the upper deck: a man with a sun-mottled complexion and an excess of yellow teeth stood at the bottom of the steps, his back braced against a deck lamp. She recognised him from the first-class lounge, wearing what her mother would describe as ‘new-money clothes’, smoking a slim cigar and, by all appearances, having helped himself generously to the post-prandial drinks tray. He steadied himself on the handrail, his bony fingers clutching the smooth, rounded wood like an eagle perched on a branch.
‘Is that you, Mr Farmount?’ Puffed from the stairs, Mrs Wallace dragged air into her lungs and blinked several times.
He didn’t bow. Maisie suspected that the gesture would have toppled him over.
‘Ladies. What brings you down to the third-class deck?’
‘Stretching our legs,’ Mrs Wallace replied. ‘And yourself?’
‘Checking on my off-duty divers over there.’ He took a puff of his cigar and let a cloud of dense, blue-tinged smoke swirl up out of his open mouth.
‘What do they dive for?’ Maisie had romantic visions of Spanish galleons and buried treasure.
‘Pearl shell. They are going out to Australia to settle a bet.’ He slid his eyes in her direction and then looked away again.
‘What sort of bet?’ Maisie followed the line of his arm. She half-expected his fingernails to be filed sharp, like claws.
‘Maybe to prove a point would be a better way of describing it.’
‘I’m not certain I understand.’
Mr Farmount swayed towards them, exhaling sour gouts of cigar-tainted breath.
‘My boys are going to show that the pearl industry is better served by white divers.’
When Maisie shook her head, none the wiser, Farmount looked at her as if she were stupid. He dabbed at his face with a freckled hand. ‘The industry imports a coloured workforce. Japs, mostly. Australia wants to kick them out.’
‘And the English divers are going to help do this? To put them out of their jobs?’
‘Precisely. They’re no longer wanted.’
Maisie looked over at the group of ten or so men who were sitting under the deck lamps, playing cards for a pile of match-sticks. ‘That doesn’t sound fair.’
Mr Farmount picked a strand of tobacco off his tooth. ‘That’s not the point. The English boys are what the government wants. They’ll give those imported fellers a run for their money.’
‘Have they experience of diving for pearl shell?’
Mr Farmount waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘Details, my dear. Diving is diving when all is said and done. It doesn’t matter at all what they are diving for.’
Maisie glanced across for a second time at the group of card players. One of the men, his cards held close to his chest in a neat fan, looked up from his hand and locked eyes with her. His stare didn’t waver. With legs crossed, the stub of a cigarette glowing between his teeth, she saw he was dark-haired and lean, like a panther she’d once seen in a zoo. His fingers tightened on the cards and she sensed his concentration on her face, the animalistic coiling of a predator preparing to pounce on his prey. She bowed her head for a moment then looked again at his face, a vague, undefinable sensation stirring her stomach.
Without warning, it began to rain gentle, warm drops from the dark night sky.
Mrs Wallace turned away from Mr Farmount. ‘Take my arm, dear. It’s high time we went back up and got you off to bed.’
Maisie cupped her hand under Mrs Wallace’s elbow and steered her back towards the dark flight of stairs. By the bottom step, the lamp cast a little patch of yellow light. She placed her foot in the centre of it and, for a reason she could not explain, turned back towards the card players.
CHAPTER 2
FEBRUARY WAS AN UGLY month in Buccaneer Bay.
The pearling magnates and town bureaucrats were crammed into a smoke-filled bar. Well oiled with drink and shiny with sweat, they nodded towards their civic leader, impatient to hear his message; it was stiflingly hot and they were not happy to have their drinking interrupted for long. It was going round that someone had set up a game later on in Asia Place and there would be the usual female attractions afterwards. The windows had been flung open but there was scant relief from the heat and humidity. One or two ran surreptitious fingers round the inside of their collars and slacked off the studded moorings. Standards of dress in the Bay had to be upheld even among groups of men. It was not the done thing to breach etiquette.
‘Gentlemen,’ the mayor began, standing atop a chair and waving his glass in a wide, embracing circle. Blair Montague was top dog in Buccaneer Bay, not only mayor but also acting president of the Pearlers’ Association. He divided his time buying and selling pearls in Asia and Europe and overseeing his business interests. A sheepdog herding its flock, his voice was hard and flat. ‘We have a delicate situation on our hands. On the very eve of a brand-new pearling season in Buccaneer Bay, our Australian government has issued a directive: we must expel all non-white labour from our fleets.’
He pulled a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket. ‘I quote what is written: White Australia will no longer tolerate the yellow-faced worker on its pearling fleet. The Japanese, the Malays and the Koepangers must go home.’
He looked down at the sweaty faces. ‘It seems our Asiatics are no match for the white-skinned Navy diver. To prove the government is right, we are to welcome a handful of English divers into the bosom of our community and employ them on our boats. There is to be no discussion.’
He watched as his words hit them as hard as a blow. They all knew what this would mean to their balance sheets.
Blair nodded. ‘I agree with your sentiments, but these men are already on their way and there is nothing we can do to stop the process. I have had to spread them among us and we will have to bear the cost of their passage. When you do the sums you will see that these flash divers will cost us five times as much as we are paying our indentured crews. They will be a cause of discontent and trouble among our workforce and the means of huge financial losses for us.’
He produced another folded paper from his pocket on which he had recorded names and details in neat columns. He had chosen wisely. The men he had selected were rugged entrepreneurs – tough, demanding individuals who had made their pearl-shell fortunes through hard-nosed dealings in a perilous industry.
Blair got down from his chair and pushed it back against the wall with his foot, his legs stiff from standing. He scanned the room and found his man amid the town’s grumbling elite, a faint smile softening his angular face. He nodded towards the door. ‘Join me outside for a jar?’
Blair found a vacant table on the narrow verandah and motioned his guest to sit. A steward appeared, his drinks tray tucked under his arm, a foot soldier at ease, awaiting orders.
‘Bring Captain Sinclair a single malt with some Apollinaris water. I’ll have my usual.’
Maitland Sinclair looked Blair straight in the eye. ‘How long have you known about this?’
Blair lounged back in a cane chair and crossed his legs. ‘Dear me,’ he said in a gravely mocking voice. ‘Did I forget to consult you?’ He reached over to the next table and stretched his fingers towards a newspaper threaded on a hinged wooden stick. Blair never sweated. There were no half-moons of damp fabric under his arms. His face and clothes were wrinkle-free. He tapped the headline with a long lean finger. ‘Look at that. Captain Scott’s reached the South Pole.’ The newspaper was dated January 1912; it was six weeks old. Something else further down caught his eye. He smoothed out the page with the back of his hand. ‘What’s the surname of that overbred English girl you’re bringing out here? Father’s a judge, didn’t you tell me?’
Maitland squinted at him, a pipe hanging from his bottom lip. The sullen line of his mouth relaxed. ‘Good memory. Judge George Porter.’
‘Seems he’s trying that big Jew murder in London.’
‘Let
’s see.’ Maitland leaned forward and traced the words under the photograph with his finger. ‘Yes, that’s him.’ He flicked the photograph of Captain Scott and his sled with his nail. ‘Would be nice to escape from this bloody heat and feel the chill for once. Wet’s hardly half-through.’ He wiped his brow with a white silk handkerchief as a streak of lightning flared overhead and silhouetted the lighthouse against the stormy sky. Seconds later, a blast of thunder muffled the blow of his fist hitting the table.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the English divers?’
‘Look, Mait, I didn’t want to tell you about the government’s directive until I’d had time to think.’ Blair pulled the paper off the wooden stick and rolled it up like a cosh. ‘This white diving thing’s a bugger.’
Maitland shook his head.
‘Stop sulking, Mait. You now know as much as I do. All you’ve got to do is help me make sure this thing fails.’
The steward arrived with the drinks and temporarily cut the conversation. Maitland stretched over to take his drink off the tray, took a sip and dabbed his lips with his handkerchief.
Blair drained his glass in two gulps without any pretence at restraint and thrust it back towards the steward. ‘Another.’
The steward nodded. When he left the table, Maitland leaned in slightly and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘You’ve got to get everyone on board with this. The local press, all them in there.’ Blair waved his hand at the bar. ‘Even the Japanese doctor.’
‘Yes. He’s popular. He’s got gumption.’
Blair narrowed his eyes. ‘He’s got ambition. That’s different. He showboated himself through that hospital-building project. He’s a crowd manipulator.’
‘Precisely.’
Blair squeezed Maitland’s arm, his mouth thin with resolution. ‘This is up to you, Mait. I’m doing the behind-the-scenes work but now I’m handing you the rope to strangle the venture. Get all our current divers on board. Offer them advances on their pay, better percentage rewards on the shell and pearls they bring up – whatever it takes. Get the tenders and shell-openers on side. Talk to Doctor Shin and offer him a donation for his hospital but make sure he’s in our pocket. All you’ve got to do, Mait, is wind the rope of failure so tightly round those divers’ white necks that they lynch themselves. Then I can get on with flogging my pearls and turning a decent profit, and you can get on with buying yourself some class. Do we understand each other?’
